Cave Stories
by MagicHats
Summary: Just a series of drabbles that may or may not become a serious series. Lots of Misery though. May also feature curly, quote, balrog and the rest of the cast.
1. Misery's break

Misery sat there, on the throne, with a scowl plastered on her face.

It had been three weeks since that incident. When that enigmatic robot Quote had defeated the Doctor and also killed her uncle.

It had been three _interesting_ weeks since then. Firstly Balrog had opted to leave with them and really hadn't told her a thing about it until a few days later. Not that she was all that angry about it, he wasn't really great company at times and it would be nice to have some space from that oaf. On the other hand he was one of the few people on the island that wasn't really convinced that she was _still_ evil.

She groaned at the thought. While she certainly had a mean and mischievous streak in her, she didn't think she was _evil,_ or at least evil in comparison to some of the _other figures_ that had been on the island. Sure she did some bad things, but most of it could be chalked up to the curse she had inadvertently inflicted upon herself by making that demon crown. The irony in trying to make an artifact to make you powerful yet you were cursed not to wear it but to obey whoever was wearing it. But that didn't make a difference to the Mimiga population on the island. Sure she wasn't really interested in being "friends" with them, but it did make it rather hard to interact with them at all. She wouldn't be doing that normally, but her mother decided to add some salt to that metaphorical wound.

Her mother, Jenka, had decided that the natural repercussions of coercing Ballos into making a very powerful magical artifact wasn't e_nough of a punishment_ for doing that. She was told not to interact with him at all, which was understandable. He was hate and insanity made flesh(Or the closest you could get). Jenka had her try and help those Mimiga rebuild after all of that was done. That wasn't going as well as it could have, and at this particular moment she had decided to take "a break" just to get away from them. Dislike wasn't a strong enough word to describe the feelings she had towards them, but she called it that anyways. She disliked the attitude the Mimiga's would give her whenever she would try to help, whether it be sarcastically or legitimately trying to help. They would come up with some excuse and then start whispering to each other when the thought she was out of the vicinity.

Today was no different. Or at least it started out that way. Aside from trying to help the Mimiga's and doing whatever other chores Jenka would give her(Out of boredom and not wanting to interact with the Mimigas), she really didn't have much to do. This had been almost routine for a while, with the occasional dose of excitement(or drama) popping up every once in a while. Sure she seemed to stir up something whenever she showed up but she also found it entertaining whenever these things happened on their own.

Like the one time Mahin stole Jack's lunch. A tight smile had formed on her face upon remembering that. She did _technically_ incite that, by teleporting the lunch next to Mahin's several other "snacks", but it was inconspicuous enough that the Mimigas didn't try to pin it on her simply being there. It was funny watching Mahin run as fast as he could away from Jack, who really wasn't having a good day that day. The chase went all the way to the pier, in which Mahin tripped and fell into the reservoir.

But then a thought hit her.

_"I wonder what that human family is up to?"_

She could leave the island at this point. That demon crown wasn't acting as a magical tether anymore. She remembered how frustrated she was when she first found _that_ out. The thought was fleeting, and she started thinking about that human family that was part of that research team. While most of the humans that came were single, a small family had showed up. A mother, and her son and daughter. She had turned the girl into a Mimiga, along with that other human that was on the research team. The engineer, or at least that was what she thought he was. She didn't really care about what positions they had besides the Doctor.

It was a rather interesting idea, hypothetically _visiting that family_. She certainly couldn't do it now, but she could probably track them down. A slightly bigger smile appeared on her face. She could just see the shocked faces as she showed up and spooked them. Was it mean, _sure_, but on the other hand she just _loved_ scaring people like that.

That train of thought was interrupted and derailed as she heard somebody approaching the throne room. It was probably somebody who had decided to try and brave the trip to the balcony and retrieve her from her "break". She groaned as she hopped off of the top of the throne. It was probably Jenka or Booster. It was surprising to her that he even survived getting hurled into the labyrinth the way he was, given his age. It was probably either one of them. The Mimiga weren't keen on going to the island's exterior, either due to not having the general strength or power needed to get to the balcony or just simply not wanting to. She sat back down in the throne and tried to block out the intruder, who did turn out to be booster, if only to get a few more moments of calm before she had to go back to those bratty Mimigas.

Since he apparently stuck around, and had taken to sticking by Jenka, she picked up his name pretty quickly. He had become a _royal pain_ in Misery's opinion. He would sometimes try to keep an eye on her and comment on whatever she was doing. That became annoying to Misery really quickly, and the two would bicker and fight sometimes. Granted a lot of interactions she had with humans seemed to go that way. She didn't really interact with the other crown bearers positively either, but that was _when she could._ The Doctor was one of the only ones that was marginally _not annoying _to put up with out of all of them, and that was partially due to science.

She remembered how all of the crown bearers would try to get her more involved with their plans in varying ways. Halda didn't do much besides strategy and magic ability, so she didn't gain much besides how to come up with strategies(which was stupid in her opinion). Annachponae taught her how to use an assortment of weapons, but like with Halda she didn't see very much use of this knowledge. Miakid taught her all about "The wonders of Technology" and while that was useful _then_, she didn't really benefit from that either now days. Granted that was partially how she got roped into helping the Mimigas rebuild in the first place, her general amount of knowledge she had gained over the many years had made her rather knowledgeable on many topics, despite her lack of interest in the topics themselves. The Doctor on the other hand, had actually given her some _interesting_ information.

Besides being a Doctor, The last crown bearer was also knowledgeable on many topics relating to Biology and chemistry. A "scientist" in his pass time, and apparently quite the accomplished one in biology as well as being a doctor.

Science was _interesting._ Magic was about simply waving a wand or staff and having your problems disappear with almost no questions asked. Sure there was a lot to learn about magic, and that was also interesting to her, but science was about explaining _why and how_ things happen naturally. Maybe it was just her outlook but science was a very interesting topic to her. Granted she was in charge of the Doctor's s_ecret back up plan_(Which thankfully didn't make it to fruition). That entailed cleaning up the wind fortress made by Miakid originally and turning it into a lab proper. Then it was making the G-CLONE; that was _fun_ to do. It wasn't hard to figure out the plans for fixing up the prototype cloning device already there, and with magic she improved it tenfold. She had managed to make it a great replicator, which could clone up to a hundred copies of something(Anything, Living or robotic) before it would inadvertently destroy the original item that was placed into it. She figured it was a fault in the great machine she had created, that either it was pulling too much out of items to make copies or that simply items could only be cloned so many times before enough natural magic and DNA had been pulled out of them for them to get killed.

A cough and a voice had managed to break Misery out of her train of thoughts again. She had really tried to block out booster coming out and criticizing her about whatever happened to be going on at that time.

"Misery, it's been half an hour. Are you done _"having a break"?"_

"Yes. Y'know, you really should try talking to those Mimigas. I don't think they appreciated your _great idea_ to have me help them rebuild their villages."

The witch stared icily at Booster. Her eyes were red still. She hated how the demon crown had stained her eyes red when she was cursed. Her eyes still went back and fourth between their original brown and the bright red that was normal for the last several years, and she _hated_ that. She really hated that, the fact that her eyes would seemingly go back and fourth between two colors. _"Can't my eyes just stick to being one color?"_ she thought bitterly to herself when it started to become noticeable, and that was a day after the ordeal. It had seemed like several years to her but it was probably closer to a hundred. That crown would always put her into a stasis between Crown bearers, not to mention had her stinted in physical and magical limitations. She had been stuck with the same physique for a long time and her power had plateaued after a while during the curse. She had quite the growth spurt after Quote had destroyed Ballos, in terms of height, physique, and magical powers. It wasn't a big change, she had grown several inches and her body was now more akin to a late teenagers than that of a young child just hitting 13.

"Maybe if you didn't do so many horrible things to them they would be nicer to you."

"Like I really _had a choice_ when I was under the Demon Crown's curse."

There was a pause then. Misery now had a tight yet malicious smile on her face. She had managed to hit a chord with Booster about the situation with the Demon Crown. She knew he felt bad for her about that but she just loved bringing that up anyways, just to make him uncomfortable about calling her out on the things she did under the Demon Crown's curse. She knew that wasn't a good excuse for everything but it was a good enough excuse for _most of it. _Jenka could care less at times about whether or not she had free will during the existence of the demon crown, but it seemed booster was slightly more sympathetic about that at times.

After a while she frowned again, before letting out a sigh and then teleporting the pair to the sand zone. That pause had become a very long and uncomfortable one, and had she been out there for much longer she assumed he would start getting upset and throw a fit. She had the unfortunate experience(in her opinion) of having to be booster's "assistant" in setting up more teleporters across the island so possibly the Mimigas would get around the island easier, and it wasn't going to bad when they weren't bickering with each other about how to set up said teleporters. She knew it was probably her mother's doing, because under normal circumstances Booster would have been avoiding her like the plague.

A plan to sneak off had been sitting in the back of her mind though. Sometime soon, she would sneak off and go bother those humans. Maybe even visit balrog for once(Since usually it was him visiting her for the past three weeks).


	2. Sue in school

Sue sighed. It had been about a month since they came back from the island.

It had been a week since her family finally got that machine working and had her changed back into her natural human self. She was pretty happy initially about that but now she was bored. The excitement of being back to normal wore off and was replaced by a routine of getting up, going to school, doing homework and doing the stuff she used to before she wound up going on that research trip.

She missed the excitement. Sure she really didn't miss being a Mimiga at this particular moment, but she was restless. She hadn't really elaborated what had happened to the island once they came back. Nobody really did besides mentioning "Hey, one of our guys went crazy and wielded a Demonic Crown against us.". They really left out the details if only to keep people from bugging the Mimigas up there. They had enough to deal with already on the island with recovering from what had happened, the family had agreed not to really get people involved, even if it meant fibbing a little about what happened on the island. They had left out most of the parts with Quote, along with the Doctor's henchmen. For all the outside world knew, the Doctor went crazy with newly gained powers and that's how she and Itoh wound up as Mimigas. The Doctor was conveniently "Defeated by teamwork". Sure they left out a bunch of details but on the other hand, those Mimigas up there really needed to recover.

Sue was pretty happy about getting back to the swing of things with school. It kept her mind off of what had happened in the last month. It had started up last week, and she was more than happy to have managed to get turned back into a human in time. It would have been really awkward to explain this story as a Mimiga. On the other hand, she wondered what had happened to Quote. Sure the island stopped falling but she hadn't seen where he went in the last leg of things.

It was after he defeated the undead core, after she had recovered from being that, that _thing._

She didn't like thinking about that relatively short time. That cursed Doctor had managed to revive himself using that Red Crystal. He then proceeded to turn Misery into a monster, and then she was turned into a monster. Her memories grew slightly fuzzy when thinking about that very short period of time she spent as a monster that seemed to be Half human and Half Mimiga. She vaguely remembered that she grew to be much taller than a usual mimiga, closer to the size of a human. She also barely remembered being able to fly. It still was _wrong_ though, because what she could remember the most was the urge and overwhelming desire to _destroy. _If she had managed to kill quote it seemed like that wouldn't of stopped _that thing_ from going on a rampage, even if controlled.

She wasn't surprised when she wasn't the talk of the school initially, the family had managed to downplay things so while it was interesting, it wasn't news breaking. Her friends were jealous of her going off to an exotic place for a while during summer. She certainly didn't find it exciting in any normal way. Unless you counted nearly being killed at every corner and hiding from a power crazy guy with magical powers exciting. Sure it had it's ups but it seemed a lot more intense and not exciting at the time. And now that she thought about it again it _still _didn't seem all that exciting.

On the other hand, It was nice to hear from her friends again. She didn't have a big group of friends but the friends she did have were pretty close. She figured the real story would get out eventually and started thinking about how to tell them what happened without spoiling too much of what happened. They happened to be sitting at a table talking about what they did over the summer at lunch when she decided to start bringing it up, a good way to wrap up what was a boring story about why they went up there in the first place.

"It was pretty exciting for a while at the end of the trip though. Our doctor found a magical artifact."

"Oh really? Did he keep it to sell to somebody down here?"

"No, he actually went power crazy. It was pretty intense for a while trying to avoid him."

And then she started telling the story, carefully and tactfully. Or at least as carefully and tactfully as one could get when they had a huge ego. She had claimed that she had creamed a bunch of the baddies on the island and even weakened the doctor a bit, which was part of a larger more elaborate plan to defeat the doctor. In this version of the story, the doctor only wound up killing himself by accident by trying to blow up a helicopter and was too close to it. Since it was on the news that a lot of people had been killed in that trip including the Doctor(The research group was much bigger than her family, professor Booster, and Itoh. When the Doctor did come to power he threw a bunch of the team off of the side of the island. Thankfully her mother was one of those that wasn't thrown very far and had landed on a ledge that the doctor didn't see), she was going to have to address that problem eventually while still making herself look cool.

The trip had changed her to a degree. She had been a bit of a delinquent in that she was always picking fights, and while she did manage to get out on top usually she would sometimes get scraped up in the process. She really hadn't considered the times she lost in fights at school "losing" because usually those who got on top would get in trouble. She was really one sided about that though, and whenever she got in trouble for picking fights and punching people, it was _never her fault_.

But then she picked a fight she literally couldn't win, both metaphorically and literally. After getting turned into a Mimiga and managing to get away from Misery, she still kept her habits of picking fights. Besides making a (albeit temporary) enemy out of king, she had generally taken her frustrations out on him and occasionally the other Mimigas. Toroko kept her in check for the most part when it came to bothering the other Mimigas. They weren't keen on helping an outsider so quickly and her attitude didn't make anything better between her and the other Mimigas. She was more than frustrated about being a Mimiga and decided that she would fix it without any help. Toroko was the only one that she didn't really try to get into fights with and that had for the most part helped her up until when she got captured. She was particularly frustrated that day and decided that it was now or never if she were to go hatch a sky dragon egg. She then ran into Igor.

She sized him up and challenged him, completely disregarding the fact that he was four times her general size. She started with her general threats, that nobody had beaten her. Igor completely ignored that, walked right up to her, and started punching her relentlessly. She then needed saving from somebody else. She hated the thought that she lost, and lost _so badly that she needed saving._ After that, it became rather difficult to get herself out of that situation by using her normal guts and attitude. She couldn't do anything in a cage and she wound up needing quote to go get her brother rather than getting him herself.

Maybe things were turning up for her after all, despite the boredom of going back to her normal life and routine.


	3. Rainy Day Boredom

It had been a few weeks, or at least that's how long Balrog had said it'd been since they left the Island. Quote wasn't that familiar with how long time passed. It's not that he couldn't figure that out, it just he wasn't used to keeping track of that. He was getting the hang of that though, he was getting better at a lot of things since they left the island.

He hoped that Sue and her family were doing okay. He went through more than enough to make sure she was okay. Sure that wasn't how things really started out since he came back into consciousness a few weeks ago. He originally was looking for Sue because apparently that was who they were looking for back when Misery and Balrog kidnapped Toroko. Things kept happening after that. After he found Sue he had to find her brother for her, and then he had to find the red flowers for them and destroy said flowers. And then things really spiraled out of control.

Since after he defeated Ballos with the help of Curly, they had managed to find a nice spot and had for the most part settled down. They managed to get a house on a beach. It was sort of abandoned but in pretty decent condition. They had kept to themselves on that little beach house for a while, if only because they were settling in. It was pretty remote and there weren't really any others nearby besides a guy who seemed to live in the lighthouse on a cliff that they could see from the beach but it was a long distance to walk to. Since it was remote enough it didn't seem like there would be a lot of problems, and for a while they enjoyed it.

But then, on this particular day something happened. Water started _falling from the sky rather violently_ and had been doing so for most of the day. Balrog had mentioned that it was called "Rain" like how the big bright circle thing in the sky was the sun. Or was it the moon? Apparently there was some distinction between the two, that the moon was brighter in the night but could be seen sometimes during the day. He sat there watching it rain as he thought about it. The moon could be seen sometimes in the day but it wasn't as bright as the sun or as big. It seemed to shine more when the sun was down, but it was still rather pretty. The sun was kinda pretty but it hurt to look at it long enough, despite being a robot while the moon was much easier to look at.

"Hey Quote, you bored too?"

"Hmm."

"Ah, so what do you think of the rain?"

Curly had came over to where he was siting and had started bringing up a conversation with her. Sure he wasn't much of a talker but he enjoyed the conversations he did have with her. She was much more outgoing than him in a lot of ways, now that he thought about it. She was more talkative, more energetic, and much more keen on getting stuff done. He wasn't quite as talkative or nearly as energetic, but on the other hand he did tend to see things through more. She was a great friend in his opinion, and quite possibly something more.

He opened his mouth to say something but then they heard a bang from the other room. Quote leaped off of the seat he had been sitting on and ran into the room, with curly following behind. What they found in the other room wasn't dangerous, but on the other hand it certainly was pretty funny. Balrog was sitting there, with the pots and pans sprawled around him. He had seemed to be attempting to even start baking something, but had scattered all the pans about when he tried to get a decent bowl out. Quote and Curly glanced at each other and then started laughing. Baking would be _something _to do while it rained outside. They had been able to make some food before then but they didn't have much experience in baking.

((AN:Yeah, this is a shorter one, but it's a drabble, like the rest of them.)).


End file.
